Dennis Cooper

Cooper's face on the book cover peeked through and watched me as I read. Being a voyeur of his love for a man too insane to stay alive makes me feel like maybe one day a man will love me this way; he will look past my own need to be loved by death and horror. A beautiful addition to the cycle.

I just bought Dennis Cooper's Closer on my Kindle and I am already terrified that someone is going to look at my Kindle and start reading it and see that it is not only pornographic, but pornographic in the most disturbing sense possible. I am fully convinced that e-Readers were invented for the sole purpose of being able to hide all your erotica from your friends.

Dennis Cooper scares me, yet The Marbled Swarm was still one of the most interesting novels I've read this year. The Marbled show more Swarm refers to the narrator's manner of speaking. It's a style that is both intricate and convoluted, but the most interesting thing about this Marbled Swarm is how it is also reflected in the plot itself: the plot continually stops, regresses, or goes off on a permanent tangent. The language is formal, and this formality is represented by a stunning lack of emotion in the narrator. Cannibalism, incest, rape, and abuse are revisited again and again as the plot circles around and around, attempting to avoid the whole point of the novel entirely. The events are terrifying and, in some ways, darkly funny. Yet it is an emotionless journey for the narrator, until the time comes when the heart of the novel cannot be avoided any longer.

In short, it's The Story of the Eye for the 21st century. (Which I had no problem sharing with all my friends. I was too enthralled by my own deviousness.) This novel is hard to simplify and dismiss it as a gross-out novel, because there is some real pain here. Cooper is too intelligent to let himself be reduced so easily. I don't want to call it a masterwork, but it's damn brilliant. show less

Dennis Cooper's minimalist prose style and his fluid and personal sense of voice disarms the reader and leaves them vulnerable as they are sucked into the winding and shadowy tunnel of this refreshing but alarming story. We are led through the book by several different narrative voices, all tied together by the thread that is George Miles, who also narrates several sections. We are shown how these men and boys use George for love, sex, and violence. There is a certain sort of detachment show more exhibited by all the characters here that is more unsettling than any of the overt violence or scatology. This book is an intense analysis of teenage nihilism and the psychosexual makeup of American culture. show less

A sickly, brilliant dive into early aughts internet culture and the sex industry, plumbing the depths of commercialized queerness. Cooper is fearless in his form and ruthless in his content, twisting and folding narrative reality in a sharp-confrontation with extreme desire.